Growing milk weed from seed can be a pain. The seeds have to be stratified (put through a cold cycle) before they will germinate. Once they get going though, it's hard to stop a milkweed. In my yard, they are taking over, and some are even growing in the lawn.

Students this year germinated milkweed in the field of dreams. These seedlings are too small to be a larval host, but in time, monarchs can use these plants in their larval stage.We had to stratify the seeds before we could germinate them, and our cold, dry stratification worked, but not very well. Most of our seeds didn't germinate, and those that did took four weeks or more.